Cock in a bantam egg; or, Who wrote the songs of Richard Thompson?
I had the wonderful honor of seeing and hearing Richard Thompson perform at the smaller of the two theaters in The Egg in Albany NY tonight, from the fifth row. It was the first time I've seen him live and I dearly hope it won't be the last. I've been hearing his tunes off and on for over thirty years, usually when friends played me his music. I had the early Fairport Convention albums but only bought a disc or three of his solo music in the last decade. So I only recognized maybe a fifth of what he played tonight, a solid two-hour show with three encores. This was a joy in its own way, because being introduced to all of these new songs by the songwriter in person was a treat. He is a blow-away performer, to be sure, a man who puts every ounce of his guts and strength and soul into playing the guitar and singing, and the result is so devastatingly, viscerally communicative as to be just plain jaw-dropping, shove you back in your seat, lift you out of it. Add to this the fact that he may very well be the greatest living guitar stylist -- I've never heard anyone play an acoustic guitar more fiercely, with greater passion, precision, delicacy, and sheer percussive force. Never heard anyone with greater stylistic range. His chord patterns often shear off, veer off at tangents that are simultaneously unpredictable but absolutely compelling. The lyrics and the voice he gives to them are like a single muscle, which can clench and punch and double back and then on a dime unclench and articulate the minutest, most delicate of digital operations -- and I mean digital as in fingers, hands, wrists. In the next day or two I will start searching the internet for a set list to tonight's show: about half the songs he played are ones I'd really rather not live without, though it's okay if I do. Something that might be called "Sunset Song" being one, "I wouldn't have it any other way" another.
An oddment: in the lobby before the show, talking to friends, the so-called Shakespeare Authorship Question was raised and I made a brief case for our man from Stratford that was warmly received. Near the end of his show, Thompson played a 1940s-era song, a kind of compressed, street-jive Hamlet, and asked the audience, Does anyone here think Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare? He asked it so suddenly that there was a long beat of silence and then I called out, not loudly, "I do." A few other voices murmured their assent. But that was it. Virtually the entire audience remained silent, a silence that lasted a goodly few heartbeats. Then he asked if anyone thought someone else wrote Shakespeare's works, and about as many people said yes, more loudly than we few humble Stratfordians, but a comparable number. Again, total silence from the vast majority of the people there. And what about this Oxford fellow, Thompson said, De Vere, what do you think of him? It may be someone cheered half-heartedly, but after a pause I called out a quiet, sighing "Boo." And then Thompson urged everyone to join him in the lobby after the show to discuss it, though he never showed up. But this is what it's come to: 95% percent of the audience at a Richard Thompson solo acoustic show doesn't know or have an opinion or belief as to the true identity of the author of William Shakespeare's works, or if they do they are unwilling to speak up. I was so tired by this point that after the Hamlet song, which failed to live up to its introduction, I had trouble following most of the last half hour's batch of songs, until the final two songs, the final two encores. But even when providing a background to my exhausted Shakespearean ruminations, Thompson was brilliant.
Who wrote the songs of Richard Thompson? Someone else entirely, with the same exact name.
An oddment: in the lobby before the show, talking to friends, the so-called Shakespeare Authorship Question was raised and I made a brief case for our man from Stratford that was warmly received. Near the end of his show, Thompson played a 1940s-era song, a kind of compressed, street-jive Hamlet, and asked the audience, Does anyone here think Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare? He asked it so suddenly that there was a long beat of silence and then I called out, not loudly, "I do." A few other voices murmured their assent. But that was it. Virtually the entire audience remained silent, a silence that lasted a goodly few heartbeats. Then he asked if anyone thought someone else wrote Shakespeare's works, and about as many people said yes, more loudly than we few humble Stratfordians, but a comparable number. Again, total silence from the vast majority of the people there. And what about this Oxford fellow, Thompson said, De Vere, what do you think of him? It may be someone cheered half-heartedly, but after a pause I called out a quiet, sighing "Boo." And then Thompson urged everyone to join him in the lobby after the show to discuss it, though he never showed up. But this is what it's come to: 95% percent of the audience at a Richard Thompson solo acoustic show doesn't know or have an opinion or belief as to the true identity of the author of William Shakespeare's works, or if they do they are unwilling to speak up. I was so tired by this point that after the Hamlet song, which failed to live up to its introduction, I had trouble following most of the last half hour's batch of songs, until the final two songs, the final two encores. But even when providing a background to my exhausted Shakespearean ruminations, Thompson was brilliant.
Who wrote the songs of Richard Thompson? Someone else entirely, with the same exact name.